Jonah was walking on top of a hill. The moon wasn’t full but it was bright enough to paint everything around him in a silvery hue. The grass moved to the wind and the sky was clear. The stormy clouds that had ruined his afternoon were nowhere to be seen. The only sign that thunderous storm had left behind was the mud that made it more difficult for him to walk.

Those green hills weren’t completely safe at night but no dangerous monster roamed those lands. He trusted the staff he held in his right hand that helped him walking and the dog at his left to be enough to scare off a couple of goblins or a small pack of wolves long enough to run back to the village.

He had to search for the five sheep that ran away when the storm hit before the startled dogs managed to keep the herd together. He couldn’t afford to lose any more after all.

He walked and walked, looking for his sheep but after hours of searching he still hadn’t find even one. At this point they had probably become food for the few predators that hid in the forest next to the green hills during the day already.

He stopped and sighed, then looked around a bit more before deciding to go back to the village. It would have probably taken him at least another hour of walking. He was angry and tired but there was nothing more he could do about it so he turned back and started walking.

He had only walked for a bit over ten minutes when he noticed a building on the side of a hill. A building that shouldn’t be there. He had grazed his sheep on these hills since he was a kid, like many other men of his village and never in his life had he seen that building. It was larger than the chief’s house, it was probably even larger than the adventurer guild he had seen in a neighboring town. Well, the chief did say it was only a small branch office but it was still big.

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He started walking towards it.

As he got near the building he saw a sign over the door. There sign showed a fork and a knife crossed under a mug of ale, on either side of the mug there were some words written but he wasn’t able to read. He didn’t need to, it was obvious that this was either a tavern or an inn, probably the latter considering that the building had three floors.

“What’s an inn doing here?” He asked to himself.

He stayed in front of the door for a while. He wondered if he was dreaming for a moment but immediately dismissed that thought. Everything seemed too real to be a dream, except the building in front of him: it looked like an high class inn made of very refined wood, it had a tiled roof and it was really well kept, but there were no window, not even a small hole, no chimney on the roof and, most of all, no sound was coming from inside.

Full of curiosity he opened the door. Immediately sounds of people talking, mugs hitting the wooden tables and forks hitting the plates filled his ears. He looked around for a moment.

He started screaming, shut the door and ran.

His dog started running after him while wagging his tail, thinking his master wanted to play with him a bit before returning home.

The young man wasn’t playing though; he was just running away from what he saw inside the building, hoping that this was, after all, only a dream.

He ran and ran and when he arrived at his house in the outskirts of the village he entered immediately with his dog, locking the door behind him.

He rested his back against the door while his lungs searched for air.

When his breathing became more regular he went to the small opening in the wall that served as window and looked outside.

Nothing. Nothing but the grass dancing with the wind.

He closed the window shutters, went towards his bed and jumped on it, hiding his face in his pillow. There was nothing he could do if what he saw in that weird building was real after all.

Soon his tiredness overcame his shock and he fell asleep.

Meanwhile in the inn everything went silent for a few seconds after the boy slammed the door shut while screaming.

“Dafuq was that?”

“Beats me.”

Like that everything went back to normal inside the inn. Everything, except for the innkeeper who was still gazing at the door with a weird look on his face.